KNOWLEDGE VS PRACTICE IN COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH NURSING: INSIGHTS FROM NURSING OFFICERS & CHOS IN ODISHA

Mental health care is a greatly underserved aspect of the general well-being, especially in resource-lacking settings. In India, mental healthcare has faced challenges of vast untreated mental disorders within populations. Community mental health care nursing has proven to be a very promising strategy. The objective of the study is to analyze the community mental health services about the curriculum for community mental health nursing. A quantitative research approach has been adapted to accomplish this by using a community-based survey research design. A total of 200 nursing service workers including Nursing Officers & CHO have been selected by following a multistage sampling strategy from four selected districts of Odisha. Demonstrating gradual improvements with experience, practice scores had a mean ± SD and median (IQR) each with a significant p-value of 0.015. It was found that most of the cases (56%) had a good or very good level of knowledge of mental health nursing, but 45.5% had good or very good practice in mental health nursing. The study revealed that the knowledge and the practice of the service gap of mental health were minimal. The majority of participants displayed good knowledge and sound practice. Recommendations by the nursing personnel included in-service education and training programmes to improve their knowledge along with the provision of adequate numbers of staff to manage the cases efficiently.